Goodnight For Others
by infiniteviking
Summary: Inspector Bishop did not see the Doctor off. He was too busy lurking. Grim oneshot, spoilers for Idiot's Lantern.


**Goodnight For Others**

Surgeon? No surgeon--  
Leave me with my pain;  
Say goodnight for others  
Who will surely rise again...  
--Old Blind Dogs

Inspector Bishop did not see the Doctor off. He was too busy lurking.

Florizel Street was out in force. Long tables blocked the way; there was music and soda and cake, and maybe a bit of stronger stuff for those who knew where to look. The narrow cul-de-sac was clogged with families, threaded with children, thronged with friends and kin who clung to one another perhaps a tad more desperately than was warranted on a national holiday. The coronation of Elizabeth II was certainly sufficient cause for indiscriminate fellow-feeling and a bit of cut-up, but these people had shared something far more immediate.

The noise was ceaseless. It made the empty building seem a bit less empty.

Bishop, silent, lean, and outwardly unaffected, sprawled in his usual chair, his back to a window that was mostly boarded up. Since the faceless people began to turn up, he'd created a dozen such haunts around the neighborhood in a futile bid for a glimpse of what was really going on. In a pinch, each of the secret rooms could be abandoned and disclaimed. This one was nearly blank; the desk was small, the telephone cleverly recessed, so that a dust cloth could be drawn over it and leave the area apparently untouched.

A pen and paper rested on the table within easy reach, but Bishop's hands were folded behind his head. His face was utterly impassive. Above his head, a system of cleverly hidden mirrors gave him a perfect and multi-angled view of the whole street.

And there they were. The long, lanky Doctor in his brown suit and quiff, and the absurd pinkness of the young woman the retrieval squads had picked up off the street.

Bishop homed in on the girl's face -- one of the few he'd never had in his files. Young, animated, full of a sparky, careless energy... no wonder the fellow had gone starkers when...

There they were, threading through the crowd as though they owned it.

They passed before the Connellys' front step.

Something roared in Bishop's head, and he averted his eyes.

Eddie Connolly had always been a bad sort. Bad-tempered vet, nastily pretentious, disliked by the neighbors... occasional informer when the faceless people started turning up. A twenty-four hour watch on his house had tried and failed to connect him with the weird tragedies, and Bishop had at last accepted him for what he was: a convenient but complete bounder. Thought he was clever, the rat, but Bishop was still a detective, and if that counted for nothing against face-eating television sets it still counted for something against the likes of Eddie.

He leaned back again, looking up at the crowd. The Doctor and his friend had stopped for a drink and a chat with Tommy Connolly, the boy who had helped them trace the television sets to their source.

They were too far away for Bishop to read their speech, but Tommy's fixed gaze drew his attention back to the door. Eddie Connolly, with a suitcase and a furtive glance at the merry-makers, swung down onto the pavement and walked quickly away from his wife's home.

So the woman had finally grown a backbone after all. Bishop, wondering how long that would last, focused again on Tommy.

He was good at reading people. Give a man a face and Bishop could read it. The folks on Florizel Street all had, to a lesser extent, the same expression as Tommy: worry, unsettlement, even fear of the things that had changed in their small lives -- all smothered and shielded by frantic determination to celebrate the moment while they could. New queen, new values, altered expectations. For Tommy, the shake-up would be more immediate. You have to hurt, sometimes, to heal.

They were talking to him now, flanking him on either side, the Doctor with his grim face on and the girl wrapped in compassion like an aura of spun sugar. Tommy nodded, his eyes still fixed on Eddie's back. Then something the girl said caught his attention. He turned to her, his face once again open to change. And then, with cryptic smiles and identical detachment, they sent him after his dad.

Bishop's face tightened. He deliberately relaxed, letting the slow-burn stab through his skull: just as it had in front of the Connollys' door, when Eddie yelled at Tommy and Tommy yelled back and he'd known what would have happened if there'd been no one to watch.

**.o0o.**

Bishop had no proof. During the investigation he'd often taken the beat himself, loitered in chilled crannies while Connolly yelled at his family, heard the words and the swear words and the spaces where other language took their place... but the walls were too thick to release the sound of blows. It was the same old tune he'd heard from his cot when his mum and older sister got their discipline, and he'd stood out in the cold and borne witness, because that was all you could do without probable cause.

The old Bishop was never too bad, considering. Bit pathetic, really. He'd never managed to kill anyone completely. When they had company, he was almost all right. And people did come -- the Bishops were popular. People came, saw nothing, and left, or recognized themselves in the childrens' eyes and the wife's trembling deference, and laughed or ignored it. In the evening old Smith might turn up, and Granny Clapper and all their drinking partners, but they were never any use when the stick came out.

_And where were you, Doctor Whomever, with your loud voice and naff suit, when the Bishop was showing his son what fathers are for?_

Follow orders and don't make waves. The words had come right from the top. And only now, watching a good-hearted boy sprint after a man who had never seen him as anything to love, did Bishop understand why those torturous weeks of inaction had seemed so horribly inevitable.

Things had started happening when the Doctor showed up. The nameless stranger had done something, broken the mold. He was somehow supposed to be different, courageous and smart, indefatigable and unafraid.

So why was he just sitting there?

Didn't he know what Tommy was in for? Couldn't he guess how Eddie Connolly would use the boy in the coming weeks? With all his fine sentiments about honesty and freedom -- didn't he care?

_Who the devil do you think you are, you angry little man, dancing in and out of this case without a word to justify yourself, treading us into the ground when you haven't forgotten we exist?_

Hardly unique, that attitude. Case workers had it, and people who sold insurance. Those meddlesome charity ladies had it. They saw you falter and slipped you scraps of life, but couldn't spare you a glance afterwards. They _used_ people, and then sat back and twittered and brimmed with sick pride, and never wondered what went on after they turned their backs.

Bishop shifted, reached up and rubbed his chin. It was there. That was still a matter for relief.

His hands still hurt from the blank time, when the nerve endings had run amok, clenching and unclenching the fingers without the will to relax.

The Doctor had glanced after the boy, raising his brows at something his companion said; then he turned back and grinned at her, dismissing the crowd from their sphere of existance. The inspector's eyes flicked from one to the other, and he suddenly felt very old, because he knew what she was for.

_She's his status symbol._

_She's his reputation, his insurance against loneliness and self-doubt. And where will he be when that lad ends up under the boot again? Off preaching at anyone who gets in his way, and letting her tell him how marvelous he is._

Do-gooder. Meddler.

Sad, capricious fool.

Bishop's mind ached with the memory of emptiness. But that was something he understood.

**.o0o.**

Inspector Bishop did not see the Doctor off. He was a busy man: places to go, people to avoid, a very thick case file to thoroughly sabotage before Special Services got hold of it. He'd say the freak electrical storm had destroyed the copies. He'd say it destroyed the warehouse too, ripped through his hidden HQ and scorched any trace of fingerprints from the rude prison in the corner.

Then he'd wrap up his office work, cite personal issues, beg for half-time off, and live quietly for a few months. And when the creepy men in black had tired of watching him, he'd look up each of his faceless ones and see how they were doing.

He was a detective -- and he was _good _ at it. He knew the file inside out, knew them all by name, sight (those reference photos would have to go as well), occupation, and circumstances of capture. He knew which ones would probably be fine, and which ones would be feeling the strain of incomprehension; which ones would bounce back and which would be beaten down. And he couldn't help everyone, couldn't solve everything, but he was one of them and he could be _there_.

Inspector Bishop did not see the Doctor off.

He knew better. It was time to tend to the living.

-----


End file.
